1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to a reinforcement for cloth, and more particularly to a reinforced corner structure for cloth, especially a tent, capable of enabling the cloth corner to endure the dragging force coming from a cord installed therein and tied at a support and thus prolonging the life of the cloth.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In general, woven cloth, which is textured with warp and weft is apt to be ravelled at the corner thereof. Conventionally, in order to prevent the warp and weft of the corner from loosening, the edges of the woven cloth are usually folded for being stitched to form reinforcing portions. In the case of plastic cloth and canvas for various tents and covers that are always stretched by force to maintain their inherent shapes, for the purpose of avoiding ravelling at cloth corners, the corner edges of the woven cloth are folded over and stitched thereat with an annular opening provided in the corner and a grommet fixed therein for allowing a cord to be inserted into the grommet and tied at a support. However, as the opening deforms the warp and weft structure of the cloth, when the grommets are under stress, the environs of the opening will to be ravel led and ultimately break loose. For example, a tent is pitched with the aid of a plurality of tent poles and ropes in such a manner that it is set up by erecting the tent poles, stretching ropes connected to individual corners of the tent and tying these ropes to tent pegs. In order to connect the ropes to the corners of the tent, the tent is generally provided at its corners with annular rope openings which are reinforced with grommets, preferably made of metal or plastic materials. However each of the ropes is always stretched in a direction in order to maintain the stretched shape of the tent, the grommet is pulled in the same direction and this causes the woven cloth in the vicinity of annular rope opening to be deformed and ravelled. In this regard, this type of rope opening has a disadvantage in that the reinforcing grommet provided at the rope opening easily comes off.
In an effort to solve this problem, U.S. Pat. No. 4,777,071 proposed a stitchless reinforced corner structure for cloth. As proposed in this U.S. patent, a foldable reinforced corner structure is provided at a corner of woven cloth for preventing the warp and weft of the cloth from being deformed and disentangled. In application, this corner structure is added on a bottom surface of the corner of the woven cloth, and thereafter, folded at both flaps thereof to cover an upper surface of the corner in such a manner that two rope openings of the structure overlap with the corresponding opening of the cloth. In this state, a conventional reinforcing grommet is attached to the overlapped opening.
This corner structure, while somewhat preventing the grommet from coming off, nevertheless has a disadvantage in that it has the folding structure, which causes anxiety as to it becoming released under a possibly excessive load, and requires separate reinforcing grommets, thereby reducing productivity.